ABSTRACT
Many religious movements concern themselves with alleviating the ills of society, and such reform or social service movements often exist in rather complex relationships to religious denominations. This chapter focuses on the example of one of the oldest such movements in the United States, the New York City Mission Society, emphasizing the “Gay Nineties” a century ago, when it was playing an important role in acculturation of immigrants. A chief goal of the Mission Society had always been converting people to Protestant Christianity. The Mission Society and the other charitable organizations of New York were equal to the challenge of the Great Panic. If in Protestant terminology “salvation” implies religious conversion—saving sinners—then the Mission Society failed to achieve salvation. If nature breeds altruism it does so most strongly within the family, and the Mission Society was in a very real sense the extended family of the chief givers.
